The elderly are prisoners in their own homes. This jab shambles is exacting a terrible toll

MY 84-year-old mother’s life, in normal times, is one giddying whirl – touring the local charity shops, popping out for coffee with her girlfriends, dressing up to the nines every Sabbath for church, and an occasional, daring outing to the cinema as part of the self-styled ‘Craiglea Chicks’.

Covid has swept away all such pleasures, confining her to the house, the newspapers and the telephone she wields like a broadsword. You can, then, well imagine her delight when, shortly before Christmas, her medical practice rang to offer her vaccination on January 19.

But, just after new Year, they called again, apologetically postponing it till February 6. And then, last Friday, doctor telephoned yet once more, bleakly cancelling that gig and unable, for the time being, to offer another one.

And my father, 80, has yet to be contacted by anyone for his own armful of Pfizer – all this under an SnP government that for weeks has insisted all Scots over 80 will have been immunised by the end of February, and promises, too, that all over 50 will be jagged by May.

Similar tales cross my ears from all quarters – bewildered gPs unable to get a straight answer about their delivery of vaccine, retired anaesthetists who have volunteered to become vaccinators and find themselves forced on a training course and to complete modules on, for instance, diversity awareness.

And, all over Scotland, anxious octogenarians who have had no offer of the jab – with ten days till February.

It is hard to overstate the emotional toll this exacts. For ten months now, our elderly have been under effective house arrest. They cannot receive visitors, dandle grandchildren from their knee, brave public transport or, from bowling to bingo to the SWRI, enjoy the gentle social pleasures that lent merriment to their lives and gave structure to their week.

TO SAY nothing of the strain on someone in my position: my own, personal fear of coronavirus pales alongside the draining, daily dread of bringing the infection home and potentially killing my parents. I have not risked meeting anyone socially since September, my hands are raw with washing and I yearn for the peace of mind that parental vaccination would bring.

It is now evident that something is going badly wrong in Scotland – something that SnP ministers refuse to explain, and for which they fail to take any responsibility.

To be sure, the number of Scots jabbed has, in the past week, increased by 25 per cent. But in England it has increased by 40 per cent – and almost all those over 80 have now been immunised.

Letters are already going out, south of the Border, inviting folk in their seventies in for vaccination and, as vaccination hubs mushroom all over the place, the pace of immunisation increases exponentially.

It looks – for once – as if the Westminster government has under-promised and overdelivered, ministers increasingly believing that by July every adult will have been offered a shot. Scotland, every day, is falling further behind.

The SnP administration was last week quite properly rebuked by Whitehall for briefly publishing, online and in high detail, a vaccination plan fat with commercially sensitive information. That was capped in short order by Jeane Freeman letting slip in the Scottish parliament where exactly Scotland’s stock of this globally coveted drug is stored.

Miss Freeman’s brief political course – she only became an MSP in 2016 – has been less a career than a caricature.

There is no such excuse for a nationalist veteran like John Swinney, who yesterday claimed he cannot reveal how much of Scotland’s vaccine allocation – 700,000 shots – is actually in the country, though ‘I can confidently say to you that the commitment we have given, that all over-80s for example will be vaccinated by the end of the first week in February, is a commitment that will be fulfilled.’

And, just like that, SnP assurances slipped back by a week. given the faltering rollout, and the scale of public anxiety, one naturally looked to the First Minister for reassurance and gravitas.

Instead in another reminder that she yet inhabits the mental realm of the student union, nicola Sturgeon accused the

Westminster government of throwing a ‘hissy fit’.

Part of the problem is that, while England is jabbing its citizenry by simple priority of age, the Scottish government elected first to immunise care home residents, their carers and patient-facing nHS staff.

This may, in time, prove to have been a prudent course that saves many lives. But people in old folk’s homes cannot be vaccinated quickly.

IT takes, typically, a 12hour day to jab 70 elderly people, trundling from room to room, shouting through their deafness and persuading them to have it – when, in the same time, you could stick 500 to 800 people in a deftly run walk-in hub.

Meanwhile, why are Scotland’s doctors having such difficulty securing the vaccine?

All was explained, on Tuesday, in the calm Tweets of one Mark Shaw, whose wife is a gP, and who cannot be assailed as a Yoon stooge: Mr Shaw is a nationalist of some seniority and, back in 2014, was operations director of Yes Scotland.

In England, he explains, the government got out of the way and sanctioned an ‘Enhanced Service’ procedure, with vaccine rollout being gP-led. Doctors self-organised as vaccine delivery units and have taken charge of ordering, storage and booking of patients.

In Scotland, the SnP laid down a centralised system, where gPs have little say and less information, and thus created a dangerous pinch-point.

‘gPs in England are leading local rollout and making decisions. our gPs are at the end of the decision chain,’ says Mr Shaw.

The English operation has not been without its hiccups. There are still a few communities where octogenarians have yet to be approached for vaccination.

But control freakery, an inability to devolve responsibility, and point-and-shriek jibes at the United Kingdom government have characterised nicola Sturgeon’s administration from the start. She needs urgently to throw open the bonnet and fix this great glitch in our vaccine programme. And to stop playing politics with our parents’ lives.